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Sir Murray MacLehose XCMG MBE HONG KONG
NXK 12/21.
Mr Crows
Mr Stuart GIR
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218
D19/8
5 August 1974
In FCO telegram No 694 to Hong Kong we gave an account of a conversation which Teddy Youde and I had with Sir Lawrence Kadoorie. They had particularly asked that Teddy should be present if at all possible as Sir Lawrence said that he had not previously met him. In paragraph 6 of that telegram I promised a letter to you on one aspect not covered in the record.
2.
This aspect can best be described as Kadoorie's wish to see the building of a nuclear power station as part of the process of accommodation between Hong Kong and China. You will have noted that he mentioned the possibility of exporting power to China, but he seems to have begun his thinking from the posi- tion that China might well feel upstaged by Hong Kong in that Hong Kong had got a nuclear power station before China had. Therefore, I think, that if Kadoorie had any choice in the mutter he would much prefer to have seen the power station built in China and exporting power to Hong Kong. However he was aware of the complications related to CCCOM and to IANA safeguards which such a proposition would imply. Nevertheless he still hankers after using the power station as a means of easing the Colony's future relationship with China.
He was more specific about this when he spoke to me on the telephone in fixing the meeting than he was at the meeting itself. sequently David Laughton, a former member of our Service who served in Peking whom you may know, and who works for Kleinwort Benson and was also present at the meeting, came to see me again in order to put across Kadoorie's point about the longterm.
3.
Sub-
Before we met Kadoorie, andrew Stuart, Richard Evans and I discussed this aspect and we felt confident that in taking the line that nothing should be said or done at this stage relating to the future status of Hong Kong we would be closely in line
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